The list of reasons to get out in the morning and ride the bike is long. Fitness, freedom, and fun are near the top of that list, but I had an epiphany this morning about another wonderful reason to ride. Food! I love food and wine. If I didn’t ride, I might weigh 300 pounds.
Watching the Tour de France this week got me thinking about it. Touring Europe by bicycle and enjoying aged French wine and old-world cuisine would be awesome. The boys in the Tour, though, spend more time consuming specialized racing fuel than fine food. These guys burn through 1200 calories per hour or more while they’re racing. Part of their training is learning to choke down 100-120 grams of carbs per hour without puking or shitting their pants.
I spend my time trying to limit high-glycemic carbs and get enough fiber, while these kids are pounding down thousands of calories in glucose gels and energy bars and still maintaining 12% body fat. I guess I just need to ride more. Not that I am ever going to consume energy bars or gels, but guilt-free dining would be fun.
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” ~ Virginia Woolf
No need to track macros or worry about the extra breakfast croissant; just add another hour to the morning ride. More riding and more food fit right at the top of the list; more FUN. That would be the life, right? Ride – Eat, Drink – Ride – Eat, Drink – Ride. Having a team sponsor pay me 3 or 4 million a year to do it would be nice, too, I suppose.
I usually burn about 1200-1400 calories on the morning ride when I’m riding strong, and it takes a couple of hours. That’s about 2 bottles of vino tinto or a half dozen Monster chocolate chip cookies. Not that I would drink 2 bottles of wine or eat mass quantities of cookies unless it was a special occasion, of course;<)
The point is, I can add about 50% to the amount I can eat on the days I ride, and that comes in handy on pasta or pizza night. And even on days when I don’t ride, the riding improves my metabolism, so I burn hotter and more efficiently all the time (huge for senior citizens). Eating is so much more fun when I don’t stress about it.